Ringleaders forced hundreds of Russian, Ukrainian, Moldovan, Belorussian, and Uzbek women into prostitution in an operation that reached as far as England, Belgium, and Cyprus.

At the end of a two-year international investigation, the suspects were arrested in 2009 along with over 20 suspects in several other countries. The convicted ringleader, Rami Saban, a 37-year-old resident of Magadim, was previously under investigation for alleged involvement in bringing hired killers from Belarus to assassinate leading Israeli underworld figure Nissim Alperon.

In what the verdict called “one of the most complex and extensive human-trafficking affairs to be uncovered in recent years, if not ever,” Saban and his associates used a network which located hundreds of you women in towns and villages in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Uzbekistan.